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A year ago, The Daily Meal ran a story about the top 10 most-followed food critics on Twitter. Since then, Twitter's presence has only grown and with it, the number of fans and followers of the people who write about dining on others' dimes. The Internet has more or less won the battle against anonymity, but thankfully that hasn't deterred these writers from strutting their digital stuff and busting out abbreviated snark in 140 characters or less.

As evidence of this social media usage spike, this year's list jumps from 10 to 17, a sign that critics have embraced the never-ending communication with their food-obsessed audiences by giving personalized recommendations, engaging in debate, and even sharing personal hardships (we’re looking at you, Ryan Sutton, and glad to hear you’re on the mend).

In some cases, follower count more than doubled. Two of the largest jumps came from Jeffrey Steingarten and Adam Platt, who both increased their following by nearly 10,000 people (both had fewer than 8,000 to begin with).

So who are these followed few? For the purposes of this list, we considered only active food critics, even though folks like former New York Times critics Frank Bruni and Sam Sifton count 162,964 and 89,236 followers, respectively. If they eat, write, and have more than 5,000 followers, they're listed here.

Though their anonymity may be compromised, their opinions are decidedly not.